Under normal conditions, one would expect both the Sacramento Bee and Davis Enterprise to back new development in Davis. In the last decade, the Davis Enterprise has backed virtually every pro-development candidate and backed every project on the ballot. In fact, their 2004 endorsement of Sue Greenwald for Davis City Council stands out as the lone exception, up until now. Meanwhile, the Sacramento Bee treats Davis more like the red-headed stepchild, treating its limited growth policies as oddities and signs of weird Davis.
Since the Enterprise endorsed in 2004 Sue Greenwald along with Don Saylor and Stephen Souza, they have a perfect record of supporting development. They backed the sprawling Covell Village project in 2005 that was defeated handily by the voters. They back Target. And they backed every pro-development candidate and not just the three incumbents that make up the council majority, but Mike Levy (2006) and Sydney Vergis (2008).
The Enterprise’s editorial reads:
THIS PROJECT in Northeast Davis proposed by developer Masud Monfared of Parlin Wildhorse follows in the hallowed footsteps of developer Mike Corbett’s Village Homes in West Davis.
Its 191 units would feature passive solar design and an innovative ‘Night Breeze’ cooling system developed by the Davis Energy Group. Smart meters would allow homeowners to monitor their energy usage 24/7. And each unit would have its own photovoltaic system, averaging 2.4 kW.
Pavement would be minimized, with narrow streets running through the compact development. Stormwater runoff would be cleaned by bioswales in greenbelts. More than 5 of the project’s 25 acres would be reserved for community gardens and an orchard where trees can reduce temperatures, capture and sequester carbon.
In short, it’s a well-thought-out, innovative project that would make Davis proud.
The project site, at Covell Boulevard and Monarch Lane, is surrounded on three sides by urban development. The site is not exactly ‘infill,’ as its proponents are calling it, but it’s a suitable spot for more homes.
That is a strange final point because the definition of infill is generally a project that is surrounded on three sides by existing development, but nevertheless they seem to agree with the backers of P that the project is both “innovative,” “green” and would make Davis proud and could be a model for the future.
They even disagree with the 2000 home figure that the No on P people are so fond of.
We take issue with this 2,000 figure – after all, the 1,486 homes, townhouses and apartment units planned at West Village will be sold only to UCD faculty, staff and students.
But in the end they oppose the project for the simple reason that they question whether Davis need more homes.
But that still leaves 541 homes approved but unbuilt in Davis, including the biggest project – 108 homes on Chiles Ranch near the Davis Cemetery – and others scattered throughout Mace Ranch, North Davis (Grande Avenue) and South Davis.
Each one of those new homes represents a potential threat to Davis’ resale housing market. Of course, our community has been faring much, much better than many throughout Northern California, but at The Enterprise, we’re erring on the side of caution.
Why build more new housing stock in Davis when our resale volume has plummeted by more than half in the past six years, and our median sales price has declined by nearly a quarter?
More interesting still since when school enrollment was declining just a year and a half ago, they were leading the way for more development and voted for all three candidates who argued that we needed more development. Don Saylor if you recall argued that the declining enrollment in the district was the canary in the coal mine, the Enterprise never questioned that assertion even as enrollment has stabilized and the housing marked has tanked.
If the Enterprise is a new convert to slow growth policies that would be great, perhaps this is harbinger of a more equal treatment of pro-growth and slow-growth policies for the future. However, we suspect this will prove to be the exception not the rule.
The Sacramento Bee is a bit more consistent in terms of their general land use polices, although interestingly enough they decided to back the two Greenwald’s along with Don Saylor for council last year, on issues other than perhaps development.
The Sacramento Bee uses the regional argument:
“When the city of Davis doesn’t build enough housing to accommodate its work force, the rest of the region suffers. It means more traffic, more air pollution and more stress on people who have to commute long distances to work in Davis.”
The core is this:
“Opponents say Davis is growing fast enough and that this development, on the outer edge of the city, would lead to more sprawl. Wildhorse Ranch proponents counter that this is a small, compact development within city limits, surrounded on three sides by housing. It includes apartments that would be affordable to people of low and very low incomes, and design features that will conserve water and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In this debate, proponents have more than made their case. Anywhere else in the state, Wildhorse Ranch would be hailed as a model.”
And they continue:
“The development’s 40 affordable apartments are designed to be completely accessible to people with disabilities. Developers routinely receive subsidies to build such housing, but Wildhorse Ranch developers are not asking for any. All housing in the development will occupy only 13 acres of the 26-acre site. The rest will be filled with buffer zones planted in trees and green space. Every housing unit, including the apartments, will have solar panels and other energy efficiency features.”
Both the Sacramento Bee and the Davis Enterprise reject the 2000 new housing unit claim.
“They say the Davis region already has more than 2,000 new housing units approved through 2013, including enough low-income units to satisfy state affordable housing targets. But those calculations include West Village, a housing development set to be built on university-owned land in Yolo County, not in the city of Davis. Moreover, the bulk of the new housing in West Village, more than 1,000 units, will be for students. The rest, 475 houses, will be available to university employees only.”
The conclusion we can take from the editorial boards, no one buys the 2000 housing figure that includes student housing and faculty-only housing. Both agree that the project is innovative. The Enterprise concludes now is not the time for growth, while the Bee argues that Davis in need of more housing “for non-university middle- and low-income workers, teachers, police officers, retail clerks and plumbers.”
Now it is up to the voters to decide whether the positive aspects of the project trump the housing market.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
David:
Given the daily large full-page ads on A-3 of the Enterprise, we clearly know which paper (and their endorsement) is of more concern to Yes on P campaign.
FYI readers, each one of those ads ALONE costs more than the No on P campaign has raised in full to date. We have NO paid staff, writers, and our entire campaign has been funded by generous donations and volunteer from Davis citizens, on average less than $50 per person.
The inequities in campaign financing by developers was a big issue for many in the Measure X campaign, why is not an issue for many of those same people who are now supporting Measure P? If this project’s feature are so positive and so green, why the campaign spending the megabucks and hitting voters daily with ads, three page color flyers, etc to remind them of this?
Lastly, I was informed that Parlin’s website (parlindevelopment.com) is no longer up and automatically reverts viewers to the Yes on P site? WHY??? Is it because we sent a flyer reminding Davis residents that Parlin listed as one of their current land holdings (and possible next development site) 207 acres of land in West Davis (Binning Ranch and adjacent land near Sutter Davis Hospital). If the Monfareds or John Tallman read this blog, can you please explain t Davis voters why you pulled your website so close to election time?
“I was informed that Parlin’s website (parlindevelopment.com) is no longer up and automatically reverts viewers to the Yes on P site? WHY??”
Parlin development website presents its corporate mission which prominently includes “flipping” real estate properties for profit. This measure P vote changes the zoning from agricultural to residential and automatically will give Parlin a suggested $7 million profit if he sells the property with the new zoning. The property retains its new residential zoning(without any future citizen measure J oversight) even if Parlin decides to sell the property without building the project. One has to question the ease with which Parlin accepted the on-site GHG reduction provisions;there are no automatic penalties written into the baseline agreement. I suspect that Parlin is counting on the fact that a future Council majority and city staff will be more than willing to “negotiate” the failure of this project to meet its promises to the Davis voters. As to the issue of any new owner being held to the baseline agreement for the WHR property, I believe that this is very much an open question. As I remember it, the citizen-initiative that attempted to void the Wildhorse development agreeement was based upon the fact that Council had allowed the new development owners to ignore sections of the original Wildhorse development agreement.
[quote]That is a strange final point because the definition of infill is generally a project that is surrounded on three sides by existing development[/quote] You mean like Covell Village?
“Now it is up to the voters to decide whether the positive aspects of the project trump the housing market.”
—David M. Greenwald COMMENTING
Center for Responsible Lending(optimistic industry analysis) for CA 1st congressional district:
Foreclosures for 2009…. 9700 homes
Foreclosures for the next 4 YEARS….. 32,300 homes(8,000+ per year)
conclusion: no dramatic decrease in forclosures for the next 5 years.
“But those calculations include West Village…”
I believe that SACOG, the State agency that determines Davis’ “fair-share” housing numbers, counts the West Village units in its calculations for a very good reason. Every unit in West Village on the UCD campus frees up a unit in Davis for rent or ownership. These homes that are now rented to students can be renovated to supply the need for first-home owner workforce housing.
What follows is from an email I sent to my editor, Debbie Davis, regarding the Enterprise editorial on P: [quote] I disagree with the Enterprise’s reason for advocating a No vote on Measure P.
In summary, I think what you and Foy are saying is “the housing market is very soft now; it’s bad for current homeowners to have a soft housing market; the city has green-lighted some other developments; the housing market might still be soft 3-4 years down the road; and therefore WHR should not be approved, because it might make the housing market even softer 3-4 years from now.”
If that’s a fair summary of your analysis, I think it ignores an important factor: the profit motive of developers. Just because Parlin or the other home-builders have been green-lighted does not mean that any of them will build a single unit. They will only construct a house if they believe there is a buyer for it at a price which will maximize their profits. If there are no buyers, the banks they depend on won’t lend to them, and the developers will wait for better market conditions.
I talked to John Whitcombe and Bill Streng about this issue and they told me explicitly that if Covell Village had passed, they would not have added the number of housing units per year, 180, as was proposed originally, because the economy fell flat shortly after the Measure X vote. John told me if you can’t sell a house, you don’t build it.
In places where it is not hard to get municipal approval for building permits, this happens all the time. Just look 6 miles north in Woodland. There are literally hundreds of home lots approved for development at Spring Lake which are not being built upon. The reason? No profits right now for the home-builders. The construction will return only when the buyers and bankers return.
Will that happen in 3-4 years (when Parlin has said it would like to build its first houses)? No one knows. It might not. If the market is still soft then, the owners of the permits at Verona, Grande, Wildhorse Ranch and so on will just wait.
If we are in the beginning stages of a decade-long depressed economy, as Davis was in the 1930s, then there will be little construction in Davis no matter whether WHR or any other subdivision has the right to build. If you look at the Bowers Tract and College Park and Oak Avenue and other peripheral Davis sites in the period 1918-1945, you will notice that during the Depression years, very few homes were built. The reason had nothing to do with getting city approval. It was all a matter of demand and bank finance, or lack thereof. [/quote]
Rich:
Infill is defined, at least in part, as surrounded on at least three sides by urban development and within the city limits. CV is not within the city limits, while the WHR project is.
Rich
altho I voted no on P, I was not admiring of the Enterprise reasons for their no. Am unsure about your opinion or reasons but do know I think the process is undesiable in that it allows for possible approval then yrs of not being built. As with our city approved remodel permits, we had to make progress within 6 months or get new permits. I think that concept should be applied here so we know how many units are truly in line to be built.
SODA: That’s what happened with Verona, it was approved by council and now it may be sold because the market is bad. I don’t know how you prevent that.
No friend: point taken. I did not say CV was my idea of infill. It simply fit what DG said infill was (in terms of 3 sides).
It seems to me that infill is not really about 3 sides. It’s more about 4 sides. If it’s 3 sides, then it’s probably on the periphery in at least one substantial sense.
If the PG&E substation at 5th & L were demolished and then urbanized (with housing, shops, etc.), that to me would be infill. The Grande, Chiles Ranch and the Verona sites to me are infill. Where the old downtown KFC was torn asunder and replaced by the Lofts (on E St.), that is infill (or maybe refill).
[quote]As with our city approved remodel permits, we had to make progress within 6 months or get new permits. I think that concept should be applied here so we know how many units are truly in line to be built. [/quote]SODA, I suspect a majority of Davis voters agree with you here, not me. However, I think putting a strict time limit on developers of new housing in that way might have a perverse effect. It says, if you don’t build your units now, you will lose your right to build. So the developer will end up building units that he believes won’t sell. So the market then does get flooded in a way the Enterprise (incorrectly IMO) thinks would happen just by approving WHR in 2009.
If I were a developer and I faced your time constraint, rather than losing my development rights on the parcels I owned (which means losing a lot of value for my land), I would build them and then either sit on them or rent them out, depending on which alternative was less costly to me.
Maybe the WHR project should actually be defined as redevelopment. After all, it was originally developed as a working horse ranch with the three homes and multiple barns, stables, out buildings, roads, corrals, etc., and now it is proposed to redevelop that area for housing.
You have good points Rich on the developer/no time limit discussion but hope you agree with my overall assessment; is there a better idea which would discourage approval then not building?
Verona is good example. Maybe all approved in town parcels developed BEFORE Measure J parcels? 🙂
Just a note: The California Aggie also endorsed Measure P today. You can read it here: http://theaggie.org/article/2009/10/29/editorial-wildhorse-ranch
“…the Bee argues that Davis in need of more housing “for non-university middle- and low-income workers, teachers, police officers, retail clerks and plumbers.””
The Bee is right. Too bad WHR won’t really provide housing for those folks.
Here is a letter I recently sent to the Enterprise.
Dear Editor I learned a lot about Davis housing options as the chair of the city’s 2007-2008 Housing Element Committee. In that process, the 12 members of our committee reached near concensus on a number of housing issues. We based our decisions on citizen input that encouraged us to prioritize housing sites on a number of goals with ag land preservation and a reduction in driving, traffic and related pollution being the most important. The later goal is obtained by the site’s proximity to schools, stores and jobs, with UCD being the major job center.
Based on these goals and in comparison to other sites, Wildhorse Ranch was rated 27th out of 37. That low rating occurred even with committee member and former mayor Maynard Skinner being a “political consultant for Parlin Development”, the owners and developers of the Measure P project. The Ranch was rated so low because it converts ag land to housing, and it is unlikely that its proximity will reduce driving in comparison to projects such as the Nishi Property which could have 460-1000 units and would be walking distance from UCD and the downtown.
I am voting No on Measure P because we should develop the better sites first and make it easier to add second units. We should at least wait until the 2010 General Plan process to evaluate how and where we should grow over the next 20-30 years and incorporate the Wildhorse Ranch land into that overall plan. The city and citizens lose more than they gain by changing the zoning of the land now.
Kevin Wolf 758-4211